The World is One Village
Listening to world news on the radio was once a chore for Mvemba Phezo
Dizolele, MPP’96. Literally. One of his household duties growing up in Zaire
was summarizing the day’s news broadcasts at dinner.
Today Dizolele appreciates his early introduction
to geopolitics and its implications. “Briefing my
father at the table actually taught me quite a
bit,” he said.
It grounds his work now in Washington, D.C.,
as Vice President for Business Development
identifying and developing new business
opportunities within African markets for the
global advisory firm GoodWorks International.
In fact, this long-standing interest in international
affairs has proved valuable.
After studying international relations and
languages as an undergraduate he came to
Chicago, drawn by its “rigorous way of looking
at international affairs.” While at the Harris
School he landed an internship at Voice of
America and pursued an early dream to be
a journalist.
But after graduationg, he fell back on his
language skills as a US State Department
interpreter for visiting foreign delegations.
Next he transformed himself from interpreter
to financial analyst, as a watchdog on Thai and
Scandinavian markets in Thomson Financial’s
institutional shareholder services division.
Wanting more financial know-how to supplement
his Harris School education, he returned
to the University of Chicago, graduating from
the Graduate School of Business with an MBA
in 2002. But after internships at Morgan Stanley in London and Deutsche Bank in Madrid,
Dizolele decided to return home for the first
time in more than a decade.
He found Zaire had done more than change its
name to Democratic Republic of Congo.
The changes he observed prompted him to turn
again to journalism—providing news coverage
and analysis of the situation in Congo and other
African nations. Since then he’s been embedded
with United Nations peacekeepers, produced
a film on mineral exploitation in Africa, and
monitored the October 2006 elections in Congo.
His career trajectory took yet another turn when
he joined GoodWorks. “Maybe I’m a restless
soul,” he concedes. “I think I’ve just been
fortunate. It’s a question of being at the
intersection of opportunities and possibilities.
“In many ways a lot of the work that I’ve done
is all similar in terms of the skill set,” he said.
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